Reel Art: Great Posters from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen
by: Rebello Stephen; Richard Allen

Hardcover. New York, Abbeville Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, large format, 342 pages. "Each of the 300 posters included in Reel Art has been reproduced to the uncompromising standards of all Abbeville's fine art books. The selection of posters is world-class, many never been published, and the definite text, by screenwriter and film historian Stephen Rebello, tells the vastly entertaining story behind the posters and their creators." The four decades between 1910 and 1950 were the golden age of the American movie poster, an era when wonderful films wer promoted through the talents of legendary illustrators like Thomas Hart Benton, Norman Rockwell, Howard Chandler Christy and Jmes Montgomery Flagg, as well as a small army of unknowns. It was a time when big studios lavished fortunes on poster campaigns - from modest one-sheets posted on neighbourhood fences to the gargantuan forty-eight sheets that usurped entire sides of multi-storey buildings. Hollywood knew that the right image could seduce millions past the box office and into the theatre. Today such graphics fetch five-figure prices from collectors seeking a Casablanca or a King Kong.